While Arch Linux is not one of the officially supported distributions, many features are known to work on Arch Linux.

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The ISE WebPACK version is downloadable at: http://www.xilinx.com/support/download/index.htm

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The download requires registration and licensing agreement, but there is no charge, i.e. it's free as in "Free Beer", but not free as in "Free Speech".

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== Prerequisites ==

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Make sure you select the Linux version.

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=== Dependencies ===

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If you plan to develop software for an embedded ARM core (e.g. for Xilinx Zynq SoC devices), you will want to install the GCC cross-compiler bundled included with the Xilinx Embedded Development Kit (EDK). This compiler requires the {{Pkg|glibc}} and {{Pkg|ncurses}} packages. For i686 installations, these will most likely be already present.

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There are a couple of very helpful HOWTO's at Gentoo:

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If you are on a 64-bit Arch installation, you need to install them from the [[multilib]] repository ({{Pkg|lib32-glibc}} and {{Pkg|lib32-ncurses}}).

and this is a Xilinx tip for usb install on Linux: http://www.xilinx.com/support/answers/22648.htm

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=== Default Shell ===

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During the installation, the Mentor CodeSourcery toolchains for embedded processors can be installed along with the Xilinx tools. This installation silently fails when the default shell is set to "dash". Make sure {{ic|/usr/bin/sh}} points to {{ic|/usr/bin/bash}}.

then {{ic|/usr/bin/sh}} already points to {{ic|/usr/bin/bash}} (the default in Arch Linux).

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If not, run the following commands as root:

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$ rm /usr/bin/sh

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$ ln -s bash /usr/bin/sh

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== Installation ==

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{{Note|The installation is last known to work with Xilinx ISE 14.6, requiring the dynamic library fix described below.}}

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Once ready to download I used, and recommend, the "Download Files Individually" option, once you reach the download page. This downloads the entire installer and installation is performed afterward via:

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The ISE Design Tools can be downloaded from [http://www.xilinx.com/support/download/index.html/content/xilinx/en/downloadNav/design-tools.html the official download page]. It requires registration and licensing agreement, but there is no charge, i.e. it's free as in "free beer", but not free as in "free speech".

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tar xf webpack_SFD.tar

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cd webpack

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./setup

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Xilinx only provides official support for redhat and suse distributions, but I found the initial install of ISE to go smoothly on Arch Linux with kernel-headers 2.6.24.3-1.

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Once the tarballs has been downloaded, unpack it:

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$ tar -xvf Xilinx_ISE_DS_14.6_P.68d_3.tar

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I first installed ISE WebPACK for Linux version 9.2i, but 10.1 was released shortly thereafter. I was pleased to see this updated version was available for linux at the same time as 10.1 for windoze.

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The ISE design tools installer is a Qt application. If you are running the KDE desktop environment, the installer may try to load the "Oxygen" widget theme, which will fail due to the older Qt framework bundled with the Xilinx ISE design tools. You need to remove the {{ic|QT_PLUGIN_PATH}} environment variable before executing the installer:

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$ unset QT_PLUGIN_PATH

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After installation, ISE worked fine for design capture, synthesis and simulation. However once I reached the point of trying to download a design to a target device I ran into some trouble. Installing the cable drivers for talking to the target interface cable yielded errors.

Follow the instructions to install the ISE. By default, the whole application is installed to {{ic|/opt/Xilinx/}}, so make sure the user running the installer has permissions to write to this directory.

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This download yields a file named install_drivers.tar.gz

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During installation, uncheck the "Install Cable Drivers" option. Leaving it checked will cause errors during the installation.

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$ tar xzf install_drivers.tar.gz

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=== Launching the ISE design tools ===

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yields a directory named install_drivers/. When I attempted to build the drivers from this file I encountered the following errors:

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The ISE design tools include a shell script that modifies the environment variables (mostly PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH). This script must be sourced before starting the ISE tools:

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'''linux_wrappers.c:48:31: error: linux/ioctl32.h: No such file or directory'''

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$ source /opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/settings64.sh

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and

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or, for a 32-bit installation:

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'''linux_wrappers.c:1398: error: ‘struct scatterlist’ has no member named ‘page’'''

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$ source /opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/settings32.sh

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Reading in the Gentoo HOWTO's listed above led me to download the latest Jungo source code, which is the core of the Xilinix linux USB support. I modified the link after reading that the latest Jungo driver was 9.20. I got WinDriver 9.20 from: http://www.jungo.com/st/download/WD920LN.tgz

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Then, the ISE design tools will be found in your PATH and can be started by typing their name in the terminal (e.g. {{ic|ise}}, {{ic|planAhead}}, {{ic|xsdk}}, ...)

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$ tar xzf WD920LN.tgz

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==== Launching via desktop icons ====

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yields a directory named WinDriver/ Within this directory you'll find:

After requesting a WebPACK license from Xilinx using their [http://www.xilinx.com/getlicense/ Licensing Site], you will be e-mailed a license file. This file can be imported with the Xilinx License Manager (run {{ic|xlcm -manage}} from the terminal).

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This update to the Jungo driver eliminated the error: linux/ioctl32.h: No such file or directory, but the error: ‘struct scatterlist’ has no member named ‘page’ was still persisting.

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Another way to import the license is to simply copy it to the {{ic|~/.Xilinx}} directory.

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After research regarding changes to scatterlist.h lead to these discussions: http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/SG_Chaining_Merged

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=== Node-Locked Licenses ===

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Arch Linux by default uses systemd's [[Network_Configuration#Device_names|Predictable Network Interface Names]]. This means that your system will most likely not have its network interfaces named "eth0", "eth1" and so forth.

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Which describe changes in scatter/gather lists that were implemented in kernel 2.6.23 in Oct 2007.

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However, the Xilinx License Manager looks for these names to find out the system's MAC addresses, which are used for node-locked licenses. If you require node-locked licenses, unfortunately but you have to disable this feature to re-gain the kernel naming scheme for network interfaces and fix the name of NIC that you obtained your license.

After installation, a few manual fixes are required to work around problems caused by running the Xilinx tools on a Linux distribution that is not officially supported by Xilinx. Some of these fixes are taken from [http://zedboard.org/content/ise-142-bug-reports this forum post.]

The ISE tools supply an outdated version of the libstdc++.so library, which may cause segfaults when using the Xilinx Microprocessor Debugger and prevents the usage of the oxygen-gtk theme. This outdated version is located in two directories within the installation tree: {{ic|/opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/ISE/lib/lin64/}} and {{ic|/opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/common/lib/lin64}}. To use Arch's newer version of libstdc++, rename or delete the original files and replace them with symlinks:

This corrected the compile errors in the Jungo USB driver and produced the windrvr6.ko kernel module. However there was still a nagging error in the compilation of install_drivers/linux_drivers/xpc4drvr2_6/xpc4drvr/

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=== Digilent USB-JTAG Drivers ===

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To use Digilent Adept USB-JTAG adapters (e.g. the onboard JTAG adapter on the [http://www.zedboard.org ZedBoard]) from within the Xilinx design tools, you need to install the Digilent [http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=ADEPT2 Adept Runtime] and [http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=DIGILENT-PLUGIN Plugin].

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scripts/Makefile.build:46: *** CFLAGS was changed in "/home/johnea/src/before/install_drivers/linux_drivers/xpc4drvr2_6/xpc4drvr/Makefile". Fix it to use EXTRA_CFLAGS. Stop.

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Make sure you have installed {{AUR|fxload}} from the [[Arch User Repository]] .

To install the Digilent Adept Runtime, it is recommended to build and install {{AUR|adept-runtime-xilinx}} and its dependencies {{AUR|libftd2xx-digilent}} and {{AUR|usbdrv}} from the [[Arch User Repository]].

This corrected all compilation errors, but the xpc4drvr.ko still yielded the following error in /var/log/everything.log whenever it was attempted to be loaded:

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xpc4drvr: Unknown symbol get_user_size

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However this did allow compilation of the entire driver tree and the install script was able to successfully install the drivers via:

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cd install_drivers/

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./install_drivers

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There is also a udev rule entry that will make the driver accessible to all users after each reboot. (Which I haven't yet applied)

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Finally, add every user that should have access to the Digilent USB-JTAG adapter to the "uucp" group.

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So after this brief modification, I am able to successfully run ISE on Arch Linux (kernel26 2.6.24) with full USB cable support.

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You may have to add the USB Vendor/Product IDs of your JTAG adapter which can be found with

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$ lsusb | grep Xilinx

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to the udev rules in {{ic|/etc/udev/rules.d/20-digilent.rules}}.

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There is a GPL'd libusb based driver mentioned in the Gentoo HOWTO: http://www.rmdir.de/~michael/xilinx/ that I was particularly interested in using. However while the source built without error, I continued to receive runtime errors when attempting to run it in ISE.

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If it still doesn't work, you can make further reading in [http://www.george-smart.co.uk/wiki/Xilinx_JTAG_Linux Xilinx_JTAG_Linux]. The magic git repo there may be help.

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I never attempted to use the Xup driver.

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=== Locale Issues ===

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PlanAhead doesn't like locales using other literals than '.' as the decimal point (e.g. German, which uses ','). Run the following command before launching PlanAhead:

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$ unset LANG

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There were quite a few pertinent facts along the way that I'm failing to capture here. Such as the fact that I discovered the same directory:

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=== Segmentation Fault on PlanAhead ===

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install_drivers/

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When launching PlanAhead to generate a .ucf file, a segmentation fault may occur. The issue seems unrelated to the previous topic. The ISE console will show

The problem seems to come from the bundled JRE as described [http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Installation-and-Licensing/RHEL5-64-bit-ISE-13-1-PlanAhead-launch-from-w-in-ISE-fails/td-p/148624/page/2 here]. To fix the issue, symlink the OpenJDK libjvm.so into the Xilinx's installation directory.

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# cd /opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/PlanAhead/tps/lnx64/jre/lib/amd64/server

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# mv libjvm.so{,-orig}

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# ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk/jre/lib/amd64/server/libjvm.so

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in the base install of the entire ISE package under:

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=== GNU make ===

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/opt/Xilinx/10.1/common/bin/lin/install_script/install_drivers/

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XSDK looks for the {{ic|gmake}} executable, which is not present in Arch Linux by default. Create a symlink somewhere in your path, e.g.

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$ ln -s /usr/bin/make /home/<user>/bin/gmake

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I would expect that this procedure could be applied directly to that without the additional step of downloading the install_drivers.tar.gz but I haven't tried this.

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Make sure this directory is in your PATH variable.

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Additionally, as a housekeeping note, the commands above expect all files to be downloaded and untared in the same working directory.

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=== Running Xilinx tools from within KDE ===

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KDE by default defines the QT_PLUGIN_PATH shell variable. Some of the Xilinx ISE tools (ISE, Impact, XPS) are Qt applications, which means that they will search for Qt plugins in the locations defined by this shell variable.

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All in all this is the crux of what was necessary for me to get the USB support running on Arch.

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Because the Xilinx tools are compiled against and ship with an older version of the Qt framework which cannot use these plugins, they will crash when launched with this environment variable present.

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Sorry for the somewhat fragmented description, but hopefully this allows others to get this great tool for linux users running on the post 2.6.23 kernels.

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To fix this issue, run the following command before launching the tools:

Prerequisites

Dependencies

If you plan to develop software for an embedded ARM core (e.g. for Xilinx Zynq SoC devices), you will want to install the GCC cross-compiler bundled included with the Xilinx Embedded Development Kit (EDK). This compiler requires the glibc and ncurses packages. For i686 installations, these will most likely be already present.

Default Shell

During the installation, the Mentor CodeSourcery toolchains for embedded processors can be installed along with the Xilinx tools. This installation silently fails when the default shell is set to "dash". Make sure /usr/bin/sh points to /usr/bin/bash.

This can be checked by running this command:

$ ls -l /usr/bin/sh

If the output looks like this:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 13 Mar 06:47 /usr/bin/sh -> bash

then /usr/bin/sh already points to /usr/bin/bash (the default in Arch Linux).

If not, run the following commands as root:

$ rm /usr/bin/sh
$ ln -s bash /usr/bin/sh

Installation

Note: The installation is last known to work with Xilinx ISE 14.6, requiring the dynamic library fix described below.

The ISE Design Tools can be downloaded from the official download page. It requires registration and licensing agreement, but there is no charge, i.e. it's free as in "free beer", but not free as in "free speech".

Once the tarballs has been downloaded, unpack it:

$ tar -xvf Xilinx_ISE_DS_14.6_P.68d_3.tar

The ISE design tools installer is a Qt application. If you are running the KDE desktop environment, the installer may try to load the "Oxygen" widget theme, which will fail due to the older Qt framework bundled with the Xilinx ISE design tools. You need to remove the QT_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable before executing the installer:

$ unset QT_PLUGIN_PATH

Then, install the ISE Design Tools:

$ cd Xilinx_ISE_DS_14.6_P.68d_3
$ ./xsetup

Follow the instructions to install the ISE. By default, the whole application is installed to /opt/Xilinx/, so make sure the user running the installer has permissions to write to this directory.

During installation, uncheck the "Install Cable Drivers" option. Leaving it checked will cause errors during the installation.

Launching the ISE design tools

The ISE design tools include a shell script that modifies the environment variables (mostly PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH). This script must be sourced before starting the ISE tools:

$ source /opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/settings64.sh

or, for a 32-bit installation:

$ source /opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/settings32.sh

Then, the ISE design tools will be found in your PATH and can be started by typing their name in the terminal (e.g. ise, planAhead, xsdk, ...)

After that you can copy this files to Desktop folder on your home and launch ISE tools from desktop

License Installation

After requesting a WebPACK license from Xilinx using their Licensing Site, you will be e-mailed a license file. This file can be imported with the Xilinx License Manager (run xlcm -manage from the terminal).

Another way to import the license is to simply copy it to the ~/.Xilinx directory.

Node-Locked Licenses

Arch Linux by default uses systemd's Predictable Network Interface Names. This means that your system will most likely not have its network interfaces named "eth0", "eth1" and so forth.

However, the Xilinx License Manager looks for these names to find out the system's MAC addresses, which are used for node-locked licenses. If you require node-locked licenses, unfortunately but you have to disable this feature to re-gain the kernel naming scheme for network interfaces and fix the name of NIC that you obtained your license.
The code below will be your help:

For more specific, reffer the page systemd wiki describes how to work and what you have other(formal) ways.

Post-Installation Fixes and Tweaks

After installation, a few manual fixes are required to work around problems caused by running the Xilinx tools on a Linux distribution that is not officially supported by Xilinx. Some of these fixes are taken from this forum post.

Dynamic Library Fix (libstdc++.so)

The ISE tools supply an outdated version of the libstdc++.so library, which may cause segfaults when using the Xilinx Microprocessor Debugger and prevents the usage of the oxygen-gtk theme. This outdated version is located in two directories within the installation tree: /opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/ISE/lib/lin64/ and /opt/Xilinx/14.6/ISE_DS/common/lib/lin64. To use Arch's newer version of libstdc++, rename or delete the original files and replace them with symlinks:

GNU make

XSDK looks for the gmake executable, which is not present in Arch Linux by default. Create a symlink somewhere in your path, e.g.

$ ln -s /usr/bin/make /home/<user>/bin/gmake

Make sure this directory is in your PATH variable.

Running Xilinx tools from within KDE

KDE by default defines the QT_PLUGIN_PATH shell variable. Some of the Xilinx ISE tools (ISE, Impact, XPS) are Qt applications, which means that they will search for Qt plugins in the locations defined by this shell variable.

Because the Xilinx tools are compiled against and ship with an older version of the Qt framework which cannot use these plugins, they will crash when launched with this environment variable present.

To fix this issue, run the following command before launching the tools: